Balakot people threaten protest for jobs in hydropower project.

MANSEHRA -- The residents of Balakot have threatened to launch a street agitation if locals are not recruited in the hydropower project.

They said that they would block Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad (MNJ) road at Ayub Bridge if government did not accept their demand of recruiting locals in the 300 megawatts Balakot hydropower project.

'More than 1,000 local people have applied for employment in different cadres at the dam for many months but none of them has been appointed so far,' Mian Ashraf, a local, told a meeting attended by the elders and local government representatives of 48 village and neighbourhood councils in Balakot.

The participants of the meeting decided to block MNJ road at Ayub Bridge if Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organisation (Pedo) and companies working on the project didn't accept their demand.

Javed Iqbal, the president of the central traders' body in Balakot, told the meeting that Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had accepted all demands of locals through his special assistant Ahmad Shah.

Pedo started execution of the project in March last year after the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved $750 million for it.

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